Loma Prieta Earthquake

A Personal And Historical Look At The Earthquake That Shook California in 1989.

Not since 1906 had Northern California experienced such devastation caused by an earthquake. Almost everybody who has lived in the San Francisco Bay Area for the past twenty years remembers where he or she was when the “Big One” occurred on October 17, 1989 at 5:04 PM Pacific Daylight Time. Measured at 7.1 on the Richter scale, the quake lasted approximately 15 seconds and was followed by several aftershocks. The Loma Prieta Earthquake was named after a mountain peak, located in the Santa Cruz Mountains, which happened to be the quake’s epicenter. The two Major League Baseball teams from the Bay Area, the San Francisco Giants and the Oakland A’s, had been competing against each other in the 1989 World Series and were warming up for the third game just as the earthquake struck.

AS I REMEMBER IT:

My family and I did not live too far from the epicenter of the Loma Prieta Earthquake. I can’t remember what else happened on that unseasonably warm autumn day, but that afternoon, my mom, sister, and I were just about ready to go to the grocery store. My dad had not come home from work yet. I had waited outside for my mom and sister, sitting on the cold asphalt driveway, staring straight ahead at the tall trees in front of our house. As I felt a jolt in the ground, I saw the top of one of the trees break off. I got up and ran back in the house and found my sister and mom sitting by the front door.
“What’s going on?!” I asked.
“It’s an earthquake Adam! Here, get on the floor with me and your sister!” shouted my mom.
I sat down next to them and we all huddled up for safety until it was over. I don’t think my sister remembers it because she was only two years old. I was six, but I knew the earthquake all too well. When it had ended a half an hour later, we all pulled ourselves together. I had never been more scared in my entire life. I am ten times more frightened of natural disasters (earthquakes, tsunamis, hurricanes, tornados, etc.), than I am of premeditated ones (i.e. terrorism).

The worst thing to happen to our house was the collapse of the chimney, which was common among many homes affected by Loma Prieta. We all slept in the living room that night with emergency supplies by our side. The rest of the house was not so badly damaged. California has had earthquakes after 1989, but the San Francisco Bay Area has not had another one with that great of an impact since then.

AFTERMATH:

The San Francisco/Oakland Bay Bridge had succumbed to minor damage when a 50-foot section of the upper deck on the east side had collapsed onto the deck below. The earthquake had caused the Oakland side of the bridge to shift to the east about eighteen centimeters, causing the bolts of one section to shear off, sending the small part of the roadbed to fall like a trapdoor. Two automobile drivers fell through the gap, but landed safely into the lower deck. One motorist had attempted to drive off the edge of the gap, but was killed after crashing onto the lower deck. The fallen section was removed and replaced and the Bay Bridge was reopened exactly one month later.

Several homes and apartment buildings in the San Francisco Marina District had been severely damaged by Loma Prieta. The structures were built on loose sandy soil, permeated with water, and as a result of liquefaction, a process whereby shaking motion and the weight of the buildings causes water to be pumped out of the soil, caused the buildings to sink into the ground.

In Santa Cruz, damage was just as bad in the downtown area when several buildings collapsed, including the Pacific Garden Mall and two people were killed when stores they were in collapsed on them. The worst hit buildings were those made of brick and masonry, including several historic structures. In the downtown business area, businesses were relocated in tents in a nearby park for months until virtually all of Downtown Santa Cruz was rebuilt.

A small stretch of the Cypress Street Viaduct, a raised two tier, multi-lane freeway, part of the Nimitz Freeway in Oakland (Interstate 880), was destroyed by Loma Prieta when the upper-level had collapsed on the lower-level and the supports on the sides broke and split outward, resulting in 42 deaths. The viaduct was demolished soon after the earthquake and was not rebuilt until July 1997.

In the end, the Loma Prieta Earthquake left 62 people dead, 3,757 injured, and more than 12,000 homeless. It had also caused an estimated $6 billion in damages, taking almost a decade to completely repair. On October 26, 1989, President George H.W. Bush signed the $3.45 billion earthquake relief package to aide California.

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Never experienced a quake and hope I never do. But the fact that people lose their lives to these all the time is tragic. Good article. God bless and I pray for His hand on anyone who has ever been effected by an earthquake.

I was 9 when this happend, i live in santa cruz.
I remember sitting there watching my older brother play the NES (Zelda 2 ftw!) and the power went out.. then the house started rumbling. I think the whole quake lasted about 40 seconds, but anyone who was in it will agree it felt like forever.
Downtown Santa Cruz was a mess... you couldn't get anywhere for anything, and everyone was frantic looking for people that needed help. We slept in a tent for a week because we had a gas leak in the house.. it was bad, but at least it didnt happen in the middle of the night. Huge quakes like that happen maybe once a century, so I think we're good for a while!

I did live in the bay area at the time, but since I lived in the Contra Costa area, Kensington, to be exact, my and my buddies felt witch happened in just the minors. No devastations for us.
Lets see, October was it? okay, I was eight years old at that time.
I remember it like yesterday, my Ma ran a home daycare service. Me and my daycare buddies were playing tag in the backyard. The oldest of them had a fractured ankle and sat on an upper deck patio to where he could see the rest of us play. Then it happened.
The one with the fracture had a younger brother. That afternoon the mother of the two came to pick them up, and told about the devastations she was a part of while shopping in the supermarket, to where people were panicking which resulted in a pushing crowd trying to exit. The impact had to have been bigger, because the closest Safeway supermarket was in El Cerrito, very close to the freeway on the edge of the bay right across from San Francisco. (those who know the area and drive the same freeway that passes the Golden Gate Fields Horse race track may pass and notice a bunch of apartment complexes that are behind that El Cerrito dome shaped hill.) That’s where they lived.
I would agree that those complexes are not where you want to be, If another Quake struck.
Well the mother and the two boys stayed the night.
I was on a school day, the next day we were told to draw a picture on what happened that day. I knew one kid who drew a picture of a baseball stadium, WOW, can you imagine feeling that stuck on the bleachers? That same day me and my whole school formed a big blob outside on the campus going through safeties and roll calls.

I live in Minnesota (and did at the time too)so I can't imagine what an earthquake must be like. I was more scared of tornadoes. But I remember I was playing legos on my front porch, my dad was watching the World Series and I heard him through the window say "WHOA OH!" Naturally I didn't think much of it, but when it was time to go inside for the evening, I realized something was bad because the game wasn't on, and my dad was watching CNN.

I think I had a creeped out feeling for a long time, if my memory serves me right, it was a school night and we had a fire drill the next day, right when we were talking about said earthquake. I also seem to remember "Full House" did a "very special episode" that dealt indirectly with it, and Stephanie having PTSS, and going to a counsiler.